Page 1 of A Dance with the Fae (Mistress of Magic #1)
Grainne Morgan stood on the rough wooden stage at the edge of the stinking harbour.
She was exhausted; she had been made to stand inside a dank, dripping cell with no room to sit down for three days until she was hallucinating from lack of sleep.
Dirt streaked her torn grey dress. Still, she would not confess that she had done anything wrong.
It was Midsummer, usually a bright and joyous day for feasting and celebration.
Today, the heat was oppressive; she had a harsh red burn across her nose and across her bare white shoulders.
Her dress had been slashed to the waist and her breasts were also bare under the unforgiving, bleak Scottish sun: exposed as punishment, as if to demonstrate her sluttish nature.
Yet, she did not wish that the villagers around her – those she had lived alongside all her life – would look away.
She knew she did not owe them modesty. She would not beg.
She would not apologise for her body or her soul.
Tears streaked her muddy face; her long black hair had come undone from its neat plait and was plastered to her neck with panicky sweat.
Next to her, five other women from other villages stood lashed to the same rough-hewn poles.
Three of them were unconscious, hanging forward from the pole by their wrists.
One of the unconscious was only a child: nine years old and there to implicate her mother.
In the crowd that jostled to get a better view, some of the friends and family who had known Grainne since she was a bairn held each other’s hands tight and looked away, grimacing.
Not to attend might mean that they condoned Grainne’s actions, and the minister had made it very clear that there was no shortage of stakes for those who communed with the faeries.
Many of the villagers, though, had always avoided her; many of them had always believed the gossip about her and her family.
Many of them might have lashed her to the pole with their own hands, if they’d had the choice.
Grainne had seen the slick of envy in their eyes, the silken desire that burned in their loins for her.
Not because she was the most beautiful – though the Morgan women who had always kept their own surname and their own counsel had always been comely – but because she was free in her spirit and her mind.
Free, independent and powerful. And those who are not free wish to fuck or kill those who are.
‘Confess! Confess that ye are a witch and receive God’s absolution!
’ The local sheriff was a barrel-chested, bearded, thick-set man wearing the colours of King James, who believed that Grainne and the others were responsible for raising winds to shipwreck him at sea.
Heavens forfend that a man should take responsibility for his failure , she thought.
The fact that the sheriff believed that ships at sea held any importance in the minds of the women before him was almost laughable.
So full of their self-importance, they were. Fat with it.
Why would I bother to raise a wind to wreck any ships?
she had asked, days ago, in her interrogation.
I do not care about your ships. I keep my mind on higher things.
Which she did: the language of the leaves and flowers, the messages of spirit, the appeasement of the Good Folk who lived alongside them all, though only some could see them, and only a rare few, like Grainne, would converse with them.
If you only knew how I have saved your life a thousand times , she thought as she hung there. If only you knew how many offerings I have made to the Good Folk on your behalf. How many intercessions, barters and bargains have kept them from your door?
Grainne knew she was close to death; she could see her faerie guides waiting for her, forming a line from the wooden stage over and out to the sea to the distant faerie city of Murias.
They held out their hands to her as the sheriff’s hot grasp encircled her neck.
‘ Confess, and ye shall go to your death godly. Not as the Devil’s whore ,’ he muttered in her ear; she felt him harden as he pressed up against her from behind.
Bile rose up into her throat, but she choked it down. She would not be disgraced any further.
‘I am no whore. I am Grainne Morgan, Beloved of the Good Folk!’ she spoke into the jeering crowd before the sheriff’s thick fingers could cut off her speech.
She called upon all her remaining strength and reached her hand out for the faerie closest to her – a beautiful, mostly naked fae king; the fae king she had known so well, all of her life.
She felt his spectral touch on her fingertips.
The faerie king was surrounded with a green shimmer, like an aura of glitter that caught the sunlight and swirled around his perfect, larger-than-human form.
His musculature was largely human-like, but Grainne knew that there were subtle differences between human and fae bodies.
The fae were made of a higher, purer elemental energy, made for their individual planes of existence, and able to do things that humans could not.
Their touch was intoxicating, making a human feel the way that drinking a few cups of mead and then dancing a reel might.
Their voices resonated at a frequency that, if the listener was not attuned to it, could induce hysteria or an uncanny sense of dread.
They were always breathtakingly beautiful, their faces aquiline, their limbs long and well-muscled.
They were free of the diseases and imperfections that beset humans.
They were intensely sexual beings. To the fae, that was a normal part of life: to be enmeshed with sex, the creative force of the universe.
The intoxicating faerie energy entered her as the faerie king touched her, just as it had done so many times before, and Grainne felt warmed and enlivened by it.
Though she knew she was dying, the fae’s energy had the effect of plugging her into a source of pure life.
It would be temporary, but it would be enough.
Come now, sweet Grainne , the faerie king spoke directly in her mind. They had known each other long enough now that they had communicated telepathically for some time. Finally, it is time for you to enter the kingdom of Murias. You have served me well, these many years. Come, and find peace.
‘You do evil today by taking the name of the Fair Ones in vain! They are no devils; they are our own angels, part of our lands. That have always been in the streams and rocks and trees and moss, since before there was Man, and certainly before there was this village.
‘They wait for me, though you cannot see them. Aye, I do not go to my death. I go to live in the hills forever; in the far castles of the fae that are full of sweet mead and fresh bread and dancing for all eternity,’ she cried out, her final words in this realm.
Grainne clasped the faerie king’s hand. Aye.
I will go now , she said, and the fae nodded.
Startled, the sheriff’s hands loosened. Grainne had seen this moment in her dreams, and she knew that she would suffer no more in this world of pain. But she had one more task before the faeries would take her away forever. She raised her chin and drew in a deep breath, summoning all her power.
‘But they will curse you, you men who bring pain to this land of magic! I curse you! In the name of the kings and queens of Falias, Gorias, Finias, Murias and the Crystal Castle of the Moon! In the names of earth and stone, air and winds, fire and hearth, water and sea, I curse you! Let no more the Good Folk help you. Let no more the wise ones negotiate with them on your behalf. Let a blight be on this land!’
Grainne watched as the waves outside the harbour walls rose and roiled higher and higher. The faerie king’s energy gave her everything she needed.
Her breath had almost left her, and her eyes blinked shut. Her body slumped against the ropes that held her upright to the stake.
And as she left her body, she held out her arms for her beloved faerie king, who had been her lover and adviser for so many years, who folded her into his strong arms. But it was her spirit that met her king and not her body, which remained behind.
Grainne felt her spirit merge with the faerie in a deeply erotic union.
The atoms of her spirit – whatever spirit was formed of – thrummed in delight, like a struck bell.
It was like the feeling that washed through her when she touched herself and found – oh so temporarily – the brief, heady bliss of orgasm, a feeling of floating, of vibration, of peace.
She had known that bliss so many times already: she had become one with her beloved countless times. But, finally, she was his in spirit.
She was light itself now, a being made of love, unencumbered with the weighty body she saw on the gibbet before her.
She was no longer limited by her mortality: released from her body, she was free.
Finally, after so many years of communing with the Good Folk, she was able to know what they felt.
How they experienced feeling, life, connection.
It was remarkable. She felt more alive than she ever had, even though she had passed into death.
Communing at this energetic level was like blossoming at the peak of an orgasm, but without any sense of tapering off or fading.
The velvety delight of it thrilled Grainne.
If I had known this was what awaited me, I would have been so much wickeder , she thought, and thus hastened my end. Or, perhaps, not worry about the little life I led here …
As she transformed, Grainne felt herself become fluid. Her spirit thrilled with the sensation. Finally, as the faerie king held her firmly, she dissolved completely into him.
Come, my beauty , he said in his voice that resonated deep in her soul. Know eternal pleasure in the halls of your king …
She knew that the other women – and Joan, the child who had been denied the years to grow into one – would also be taken by the Good Folk, as a reward for their faithful honouring of the fae. The Good Folk would not let their favoured humans be strangled and burned.
She went willingly to Murias, the faerie realm of water. The King of Murias led her in an embrace over the waves to a distant, gleaming castle, and if she still had a heart, it would have exploded with joy.